Put your thinking hat on: Amazing 'brain cap' lets stroke patients move their limbs using the power of thought

By Daniel Bates
From http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

It is not so much ‘I think therefore I am’, but ‘I think therefore I move’.

Researchers have developed a ‘brain cap’ which lets stroke patients move parts of their body using just the power of their mind.

The team tracked the brain signals of healthy people as they walked along then used the data to ‘retrain’ the minds of those who were unable to move on their own.

They say it can help people who have suffered a stroke, been paralysed or those who have muscle wasting diseases to walk once again.

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All in the mind: University of Maryland student Harsha Agashe wears the 'brain cap', a non-invasive, sensor-lined piece of headwear that scientists claim lets stroke patients move parts of their body using just the power of thought

Getting patients moving gives them a
new found freedom but it also helps combat other health problems like
obesity and diabetes, the researchers said.

They also hope the technology could help such people move other limbs they are unable to like their hands.

The breakthrough was part of an ongoing project by the University of Maryland (UMD).

Unlike other non-invasive techniques it does not require much training and is the first to achieve results on a par with patients who have had electrodes implanted into their brains.

Patients wear a cap which is wired with hundreds of sensors and it connected up to the lab computers which monitor their brain waves.

By scanning a healthy person undertaking a number of activities such as walking over an object or just strolling along, they know how the brain should ‘think’ when doing so.

Scanning: Patients wear a cap which is wired with hundreds of sensors and it connected up to the lab computers which monitor their brain waves

‘By decoding the motion of a normal gait, we can then try and teach stroke victims to think in certain ways and match their own EEG signals with the normal signals,’ said José Contreras-Vidal, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at UMD.

UMD biomedical doctoral student Steve Graff, who is working on the project, added that a good way of doing this is to show a patient an avatar on a computer screen who is walking properly and get them to copy it.

Graff, who has congenital muscular dystrophy and is in a wheelchair, said he hopes that the technology will one day allow him to use a mobile phone or throw a football - with just the power of his mind.

‘It gives us a way to train someone to think the right thoughts to generate movement from digital avatars. If they can do that, then they can generate thoughts to move a device,’ he told Gizmag.

The UMD team had previously got a patient to recreate 3D hand movements and move a computer cursor with their mind.

Their aim is to help the disabled achieve a full return of motor functions following injury, paralysis or stroke.

By scanning a healthy person undertaking a number of activities such as walking over an object or just strolling along, they know how the brain should 'think' when doing so

Amputee Patrick demonstrates his new bionic hand

Last year, Patrick, a 24-year-old Austrian, decided to have his dysfunctional hand amputated and replaced with a bionic hand. He lost the use of his left hand after being electrocuted at work.

Here he demonstrates the extra movement his new bionic hand has given him, opening a bottle and tying his shoelaces, and tests a prototype hand which will give him additional wrist movement.

Robotic Limbs that Plug into the Brain

Scientists are testing whether brain signals can control sophisticated prosthetic arms.

By Emily Singer

From http://www.technologyreview.com/

Lifelike limbs: A brain-controlled prosthetic arm, under development at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University with funding from DARPA, may allow amputees to make much more sophisticated movements.
Credit: DARPA/JHUAPL/HDT Engineering Services

Most of the robotic arms now in use by some amputees are of limited practicality; they have only two to three degrees of freedom, allowing the user to make a single movement at a time. And they are controlled with conscious effort, meaning the user can do little else while moving the limb.

A new generation of much more sophisticated and lifelike prosthetic arms, sponsored by the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), may be available within the next five to 10 years. Two different prototypes that move with the dexterity of a natural limb and can theoretically be controlled just as intuitively--with electrical signals recorded directly from the brain--are now beginning human tests.

Initial results of one of these studies--the first tests of a paralyzed human controlling a robotic arm with multiple degrees of freedom--will be presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in November.

The new designs have about 20 degrees of independent motion, a significant leap over existing prostheses, and they can be operated via a variety of interfaces. One device, developed by DEKA Research and Development, can be consciously controlled using a system of levers in a shoe.

In a more invasive but also more intuitive approach, amputees undergo surgery to have the remaining nerves from their lost limbs moved to the muscles of the chest. Thinking about moving the arm contracts the chest muscles, which in turn moves the prosthesis. But this approach only works in those with enough remaining nerve capacity, and it provides a limited level of control. To take full advantage of the dexterity of these prostheses, and make them function like a real arm, scientists want to control them with brain signals.

"When you pick up an object, your brain knows automatically to rotate the wrist and move the fingers," says Michael McLoughlin, who is overseeing the development of one of the prostheses at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University. "We want a dexterous limb and the ability to control it in a natural way, as well as some level of tactile feedback."

Limited testing of neural implants in severely paralyzed patients has been underway for the last five years. About five people have been implanted with chips to date, and they have been able to control cursors on a computer screen, drive a wheelchair, and even open and close a gripper on a very simple robotic arm. More extensive testing in monkeys implanted with a cortical chip shows the animals can learn to control a relatively simple prosthetic arm in a useful way, using it to grab and eat a piece of marshmallow.

"The next big step is asking, how many dimensions can you control?" says John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University who develops brain-computer interfaces. "Reaching out for water and bringing it to the mouth takes about seven degrees of freedom. The whole arm has on order of 25 degrees of freedom." Donoghue's group, which has overseen previous tests of cortical implants in patients, now has two paralyzed volunteers testing the DEKA arm. Researchers at APL have developed a second prosthetic arm with an even greater repertoire of possible movements and have applied for permission to begin human tests. They aim to begin implanting spinal cord injury patients in 2011, in collaboration with scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and Caltech.

Volunteers in this study will get two different cortical chips, each carrying 100 recording electrodes. Scientists hope that doubling the capacity to listen to the brain will provide enough independent signals to enable more complex movements on the sophisticated APL arm. "This is a highly dexterous and anthropomorphic arm," says Andrew Schwartz, one of the neuroscientists involved in the study. "The information bandwidth you need to control the device is a lot higher."

The Pittsburgh researchers will also test new chips combined with telemetry systems, which process some of the recorded information on the chip before sending it to a processor implanted in the chest. The processor then wirelessly controls the arm. Current versions in use in humans and monkeys send information via wires coming out of the skull, which increases risk of infection over the long term. While the new setup will be somewhat similar to that used in cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulation devices, a prosthetic arm carries out more complex functions than a pacemaker, and therefore more information is needed to control it. "No implantable device has a telemetry system capable of this bandwidth," says Schwartz. "This technology will be a big step."

The Pittsburgh researchers ultimately aim to add sensory capability to the arms as well, adding materials that can sense heat and other properties and convey that information to a third chip implanted into part of the brain that processes sensory stimuli.

It's not yet clear what the highest level of complexity will be in terms of controlling the arm. "We're hoping to do at least 11 degrees of freedom," says Schwartz. His team has developed algorithms that can derive seven degrees of freedom of movement in monkeys in real time. "How will we move up to 20 or 30? We don't know, maybe we'll need new algorithms, maybe more electrodes," says Schwartz.

Even if the tests are successful, researchers face a big challenge; they must show that the invasive cortical control system is significantly better than noninvasive approaches. Amputees using the shoe-controlled interface can pick up boxes, operate a drill, and even use chopsticks. "If you were an amputee, and you can do that with shoes, would you have a sensor put in your brain?" asks Donoghue. It may be a matter of personal preference and the level of risk and benefit each person is willing to tolerate. "You might, because it's more natural and you can walk and do other things."

Copyright Technology Review 2010.

Body acoustics can turn your arm into a touchscreen

• by Paul Marks
• from http://www.newscientist.com/
  

Finding the keypad on your cellphone or music player a bit cramped? Maybe your forearm could be more accommodating. It could become part of a skin-based interface that effectively turns your body into a touchscreen.

Called Skinput, the system is a marriage of two technologies: the ability to detect the ultralow-frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized "pico" projectors now found in some cellphones.

The system beams a keyboard or menu onto the user's forearm and hand from a projector housed in an armband. An acoustic detector, also in the armband, then calculates which part of the display you want to activate.

But how does the system know which icon, button or finger you tapped? Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working with Dan Morris and Desney Tan at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, exploit the way our skin, musculature and skeleton combine to make distinctive sounds when we tap on different parts of the arm, palm, fingers and thumb (see video).

Bone machine

They have identified various locations on the forearm and hand that produce characteristic acoustic patterns when tapped. The acoustic detector in the armband contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each weighted to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies. Different combinations of the sensors are activated to differing degrees depending on where the arm is tapped.

Twenty volunteers tested the system and most found it easy to navigate through icons on the forearm and tap fingers to actuate commands.

"Skinput works very well for a series of gestures, even when the body is in motion," the researchers say, with subjects able to deftly scroll through menus whether they moved up and down or flicked across their arm.

The system could use wireless technology like Bluetooth to transmit commands to many types of device – including phones, iPods and even PCs. The researchers will present their work in April at the ACM Computer-Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

Body control

Pranav Mistry of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology warns that users will have to position the armband very precisely so the projection always appears in the right place.

Nevertheless, Skinput looks a promising idea, says Michael Liebschner, director of the Bio-Innovations Lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who has worked on bone acoustic conduction technology for gadget-to-gadget transmission.

"This sounds a very feasible approach to using the body itself as an input device," he says. "When you are immersed in a virtual game using a head-mounted 3D display, you cannot just take it off to fiddle around with control buttons. This will make things much easier."

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Have your say

Prosthetics...Nothing is going to hold him down....He is incredible....

Are we looking outside this morning and thinking ..."Sure, the sun is shining, but b-r-r-r-r it's still very chilly out there."

If that's so... take a look at the little fellow below and see if the morning weather still means anything.
Here is a little guy who will go far in life and with a huge smile on his face. Hats off to his parents for showing that he can do everything in life he wants to. Your attitude towards life defines who you are..

Whatever is bugging you, doesn't seem so big anymore, does it?
Puts life into perspective in a real big hurry!
What an adorable little guy!

Japanese 'robot suit' to help disabled

A Japanese company has unveiled a robotic suit that is designed to help people with weak limbs or limited physical range to walk and move like an able-bodied person.

By Claudine Beaumont, Technology Editor

People with disabilities can hire the suit at a cost of Y220,000 (£1,370) per month

The suit, called HAL – or Hybrid Assistive Limb – is the work of Cyberdyne Corporation in Japan, and has been created to "upgrade the existing physical capabilities of the human body".

HAL, which weighs 23kg, is comprised of robotic 'limbs', and a backpack containing the suit's battery and computer system. It is strapped to the body and controlled by thought. When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles, and very weak traces of these signals can be detected on the surface of the skin. The HAL suit identifies these signals using a sensor attached the skin of the wearer, and a signal is sent to the suit's power unit telling the suit to move in unison with the wearer's own limbs.

People with physical disabilities, such as stroke-induced paralysis or spinal cord injuries, can hire the suit at a cost of Y220,000 (£1,370) per month, and Cyberdyne Corporation believes the technology can have a variety of applications, including in physical training and rehabilitation, adding extra "muscle" to heavy labour jobs, and even in rescue and recovery operations.

HAL can help the wearer to carry out a variety of every day tasks, including standing up from a chair, walking, climbing up and down stairs, and lifting heavy objects. The suit can operate for almost five hours before it needs recharging, and Cyberdyne Corporation says that it does not feel heavy to wear, because the robotic exoskeleton supports its own weight.

Researchers at the corporation said HAL had been designed for use both indoors and outdoors. Professor Yoshiyuki Sankai, the company's founder and chief executive, originally created the suit for climbing mountains.

"HAL can even work in the snow at a height of 4,000m above sea level," claims the company.